TREC-2 routing and ad-hoc retrieval evaluation using the INQUERY system
W. Bruce Croft, James P. Callan, John Broglio · Text REtrieval Conference · 1993
The ARPA TIPSTER project which is the source of the data and funding for TREC, has involved four sites in the area of text retrieval and routing. The TIPSTER project in the information Retrieval of the Computer Science Department, University of Massachussetts, Amherst (which includes MCC as a subcontractor), has focused on the following goals: improving the effectiveness of information retrieval techniques for large, full-text databases; 2: improving the effectiveness of routing techiques appropriate for long-term information needs; 3- Demonstrating the effectiveness of these retrieval and routinq techniques for Japanese full text database. Our general approach to achieve these goals has been to use improved representations of text and information needs in the framework of a new model of retrieval. This model uses Bayesian netwoks to describe how text and queries should be uses to identify relevant document. Retrieval (and routing) is viewed as a probabilistic inference process whic compares text representations based on different forms of linguistic and statistical evidence to representations of information needs. Learnin techniques are uses to modify the initial query both for short-terme and long-term information needs (relevance feedback and routing, respectively)